TM Insider: Giving & Receiving Feedback

Feedback is one of the 3 pillars of Toastmasters.  It is where members benefit the most because how else are they to know their progress.

The advantage of getting feedback from Toastmasters is that it is from your peers.  That way you will know how you come across to the everyday man on the street.  Of course it is always good to get feedback from experts if any are present in your meetings, like very senior Toastmasters.

A simple constructive criticism will help members improve by leaps and bounds, given of course, that they take the feedback to heart and try to incorporate them into their future projects.  It is futile when members do project after project without even listening to the feedback given.

Members have to remember that feedback given is with the intention of helping them improve and is nothing personal.  They are observations from somebody who is seeing you in action, sometimes for the very first time.  However it is food for thought when something is pointed out repeatedly by different evaluators.

Do you do this habitually even in your everyday life?

These feedback are useful even if you are not presenting a speech.  They could help you improve in your everyday interaction with the people in your life.

On the other end of the spectrum, members also get to give feedback to other people by being an evaluator.  This is where many new evaluators fail because they balk at giving negative feedback to people.

In actual fact, being an evaluator is not that difficult.  You just have to bear in mind that the purpose of your evaluation is to help the speaker become better.  Don’t be intimidated just because the speaker is someone who is more experienced that you.  There is always room for improvements and that won’t happen if the speaker receives glowing reviews all the time.

However, being an evaluator does not mean your job is to tear somebody’s speech apart and purposely nitpick.  Give feedback that are helpful in a way that is positive.

Don’t say, “That’s a terrible speech!”

Instead, you can say, “That speech can be improved by including this like…”

That being said, remember that an evaluation is just an opinion.  There is no wrong or right to it.  However, if two or more evaluators pointed out the same room for improvement for you, this is something that you might want to think about.

 If you would like the opportunity to hone your public speaking skills as well as learn leadership skills, join us for our bi-monthly meetings on every 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month.  Our meetings start at 8pm.  For further information please contact us at gurneyhydrotoastmastersclub@gmail.com or refer to our Next Meeting page for information on our next meeting.